


suckerpunch.

by xavierdolls



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 03:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11005467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xavierdolls/pseuds/xavierdolls
Summary: Maggie couldn’t have done anything. She still tells herself that today. She was thirteen and even smaller than she is as an adult, and the man could have swatted her away and then started hitting her, assaulting her too, and Maggie was scared.She likes to think that everyone else was just scared, too.But that doesn’t explain why no one called nine one one.or:Maggie witnesses a hatecrime





	suckerpunch.

Maggie saw it happen before she ever felt it herself. Some poor boy who was braver than her, or dumber than her, decided to be proud when he should have run. It happened on the street, in broad daylight. Twelve people watched (herself included, she counted them all) as the man in his late twenties pushed the boy in his mid teens down and laid into him. He hit again and again and again, even when it passed the point where it stopped being a fight and started being as assault. Maggie stood outside the bodega with her paper bag with the eggs and the bread and the Twix bar, and she watched. She watched with all of them.

Maggie wasn't sure if everyone had seen the start of the altercation, if they knew what the motivating factor was. She wondered if that was the reason no one stepped in, or if it was just garden variety self preservation. The attacker was big. Really big. He could probably take on any random two or three of the onlookers if he wanted to.

Maggie couldn't have done anything. She still tells herself that today. She was thirteen and even smaller than she is as an adult, and the man could have swatted her away and then started hitting her, assaulting her too, and Maggie was scared.

She likes to think that everyone else was just scared, too.

But that doesn't explain why no one called nine one one.

The man got up off of the cement and looking around, hunched forward, like he was challenging anyone to say anything.

He grabbed the boy’s wallet like an afterthought and walked, uninhibited, to his car. He turned on the radio before he drove off. The rolling stones was playing.

Only after the car was clear of the street did anyone approach. A woman went to touch the boy and brought her hand back, all covered in blood.

All at once, everyone snapped back into reality.

"Someone call nine one one!" someone called, but everything assumed that everyone else would call, so no one did. It was half an hour before the paramedics arrived, and then it wasn't because someone who had seen it happen had made the call, but because the boy's parents had been expecting him and he hadn't shown up.

The police arrived and people scattered. They tried to grab a few people, to ask what happened, and one officer stopped Maggie with a hand on her shoulder.

"I didn't see anything," she said.

"Are you sure?" the officer asked, notepad flipped open and pen out.

Maggie thought about her parents at home. They'd sent her out on what should have been a twenty minute trip. That was almost two hours ago.

Maggie clutched the paper bag tighter to her chest.

How late had that boy been, before his parents had started calling hospitals?

"I'm sure." she said, and walked the rest of the way home with that sound playing in her head, not just the skull on the pavement but what came before it, too. What the man had screamed, what the boy had screamed back at him.

She reached the front door as the sun was just starting to set. Her casio watched told her she was now two and half hours late. The first thing she saw as she stepped inside was her mother’s annoyed face poking around from the kitchen.

“What took so long, Margaret?” her mother said, as Maggie entered the house. She kicked off both her shoes since her hands were full, “I need to eggs before I start dinner. We won’t eat until seven now. I _hope_ you’re not too hungry.”

Maggie rolled her shoulders back and followed her mother into the kitchen.

"Mama, what's a queer?" Maggie asked after she set the small bag of groceries on the counter. Her mother's back was turned, but Maggie watched her tense, turn, slowly, and take the groceries.

"Where did you hear that, Margaret?" her mother asked, taking the products out of the bag. Maggie wondered for a moment if she'd remembered to take her candy wrapper out of the bag, or if her mother would find it and she'd be in trouble.

Maggie shrugged. Something about the gravity of the situation told her not to divulge everything. Not here, in the kitchen, with her father turning down the volume on the TV in the next room so he could listen to.

"Some man said it. At the store," close enough to the truth.

Her mother finished packing away the groceries and clicked her tongue. She pulled a long wooden spoon out of the draw and held it for a moment.

"Did he say it to _you_?" her mother asked, gesturing up and down at her with the spoon.

"No," Maggie shook her head, "he said it to this boy. He-"

"What boy?" her mother asked, "Do you know him?"

Maggie shook her head. "Just some boy. He was on the street. They looked like they were arguing."

Just then, her father came into the room. He stooped as he entered the kitchen, looking oversized. Or making Maggie look undersized.

"What was the boy doing?" her father asked. He shared a look with her mother that Maggie would understand perfectly exactly eight months later, on the worst night of her life.

"I didn't see. He was just there. The man, he-" Maggie was about to tell them about the violence, at least allude to it.

"Are you sure you don't know him? No one from school?" her father pressed.

This conversation was quickly becoming more than Maggie had bargained for.

"No, I dunno, I... I have homework," Maggie said, and fled the kitchen to go to her room. From upstairs, she could hear voices in the kitchen. She only realised when she closed and locked her door that she hadn’t actually gotten an answer to her question.

* * *

The boy died in hospital four hours later. A sliver of rib had broken off and the shard had cut into his lungs. They filled with blood, and he drowned on it.

They didn’t have the decency to call it murder.

* * *

 Eliza was the one who told her was queer meant, through snickers and after she looked three ways to make sure no one was nearby.

Maggie tried to pretend that it wasn’t an earth shattering revelation. She hadn’t ever thought about… that. Even considered it might be possible.

Maggie told her what happened at the store that day, the full story, and Eliza shifted when she mentioned that the boy had died later.

“Oh,” she’d said, “That’s really sad.”

“Yeah…” Maggie breathed in deeply when Eliza put a hand on her knee, and then moved it around her back to pull her close. “I guess it is.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Maggie nodded into Eliza’s side. Eliza’s pretty by any standard hair fell across Maggie’s face, and she didn’t even mind the way it tickled her nose.

So Eliza didn’t want the boy to die. Maggie thought that small sentiment, coupled with the way she had put her arm around Maggie’s waist, meant more than they probably did.

And Maggie got just a _bit_ too brave.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [@marshalldolls](http://marshalldolls.tumblr.com/writingcomm).


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